Corvette summer

Curvaceous
London, ON, July 2010
[Click all photos to enlarge]

About this photo: It's our Thematic Photographic summer-themed week all week long, and I'm hoping you'll click here to share your own. Click here for more info on the Gawd-awful movie from which I stole the title to this entry. Mark Hamill and Annie Potts, what were you thinking?

I'm a bit of a realist when it comes to cars. I believe the state-of-the-automotive-art needs to advance to the point that our vehicles do less harm to the planet. At the same time, I appreciate, deeply, the impact the automobile has had on modern culture. I'm not a car guy and I don't have motor oil coursing through my veins, but I spend a lot of time appreciating vehicles for what they often are: Rolling pieces of engineering-based art that happen to inspire a good number of us in a whole lot of ways.

So when someone parked a blue, early-70s Corvette in a nearby driveway on a brilliant July afternoon, I couldn't resist shooting it surreptitiously from afar. The curves and surfaces almost begged for some attention, even if your humble shooter was too chicken to step off his own lawn to capture them.

There are a whole lot of reasons I should not like this car. It's a two-seat, gas-sucking, emission-spewing hog that could probably be bested by a Hyundai Sonata 2.0T in a closed-course, only-for-professionals, head-to-head race. It's only marginally more reliable than the British Racing Green Plymouth Cricket (a rebadged Hillman Avenger) my mom owned when I was a kid (the one with the huge chunk missing from the dash; the one that spent more time waiting for parts at the local garage than it did in front of our house.) It's the poster boy for all that went wrong in the American automotive industry in the 1970s, now referred to, somewhat derisively, as the Malaise Era*.

Yet, it's a stunning piece of work to simply stare at. I know its fiberglass body is the purest example of form over function. But what form! My camera loves this thing infinitely more than it ever would the Sonata, and I could probably spend the better part of a day walking around it picking out new perspectives.

Alas, I only had a few minutes and limited angles due to my inherent desire to not be noticed. So these will have to do for now.

Your turn: Your favorite car to shoot is a...? Why?

* Malaise Era definition: Reference to the era after the 1973 Oil Crisis, generally agreed to be 1973-1982, when automobiles, especially American ones, experienced a perceived downturn in style, performance, and quality. [Source: Jalopnik.com]